Posted by Extranjero on November 09, 2007 at 13:04:33:
BLOOD ANGELS
The doorbell rang. “Oh bloody hell, she’s early,” Karen said. She was fresh from the shower and wearing nothing but her skimpy robe. Susannah went to get the door with a smirk over her shoulder, while Emma cleared the sofa, which was strewn with magazines.
“Hello,” they heard a posh voice say, “I’ve come about the room.” Emma and Karen shared a knowing glance. Karen shook her damp hair back and tightened the belt around her hourglass waist. There was no point getting dressed for this: the girl would have to take her as she was. Emma was wearing leggings and a sleeveless Playboy T-shirt. Looking at her, nobody would have guessed she was a nurse.
Susannah showed the caller through into the living room. The girl had an exotic look, with doe-brown eyes and a mane of black silk hair. She wore a smart cream suit that hugged her figure, and the skirt was an inch too short to be demure. But compared to the three housemates, she looked positively frumpy. Even shy Susannah wore a crop top and a pair of hipster jeans.
“Melinda, isn’t it?” said Emma. “Sit down, please. Would you like a cup of tea?”
The dark-eyed girl sat down a little primly on the easy chair in the corner of the room. She kept her knees together with her handbag resting on them. “A cup of Lapsang Souchong would be nice.”
“Yeah, well …” Emma said. “We might have PG Tips or something.” She turned towards the kitchen, rolling her eyes as she passed the other two.
Karen and Susannah managed to keep their faces straight. They settled on the sofa, peering frankly at their guest. “Mind if I finish doing my nails?” drawled Karen, leaning forward. Melinda looked discomfited, but managed a brief smile.
Just wait till you start living with her, Susannah thought. She gave the girl a friendly grin. “So, you saw our advert on the noticeboard?”
Melinda nodded earnestly. “It sounds just right for me. The three of you are nurses, I believe?”
“Sure,” said Karen, still applying varnish to her toenails. She raised her eyes. “I guess you’re new. Don’t tell me – you’re in admin, or accounts.”
Melinda simpered. “Kind of.” One hand dipped into her bag. “But mostly I’m responsible for discharges and deaths.”
She calmly drew an automatic pistol from the bag. It was a short Beretta Cougar, fitted with a stubby silencer. The watching girls went very still, although their eyes grew wider. They heard the kettle being filled. And then Melinda gave them two slugs each.
Karen was still craned forward with her cleavage on display. Her left breast twitched, and then her right, the bullets ploughing deep into her chest. She flipped back with a two-tone grunt. Susannah’s mouth dropped open. Then her crop-top flowered red as the third shot chewed its way towards her heart. She gave a guttural sob, and took the fourth round in her forehead. Her head snapped back as if she’d just been punched.
Melinda got up smoothly as the bodies twitched and folded, sagging against each other like two lovers dozing off. Karen dropped her varnish and it spilled across her thigh, a crimson trail to match her leaking breasts.
“Sugar and milk?” called Emma from the kitchen.
Melinda smiled and sauntered through. Emma turned her head, then swung round with a gasp. Melinda glimpsed the joggling of her breasts beneath the T-shirt. She put a bullet through the eye of the Playboy bunny head. Emma squeaked with pain, her eyes like saucers. She lurched against the worktop, plucking vainly at her tits. The bunny’s eye began to weep bright scarlet. The stain spread as Melinda watched, and Emma drooped and tumbled to the floor.
Melinda lowered her aim and gave the girl a coup de grace. “Don’t worry, babes,” she purred. “I like it black.”
Still smiling, she crossed the living room and turned off the light. After a minute’s pause, the doorbell rang. Melinda answered it to two young women wearing jeans and sweaters. They had a trim, athletic look, and the hard faces of former army girls. Ignoring the slumped bodies, they went prowling up the stairs. Melinda closed the door and followed them. A quick search of the bedrooms got them everything they needed. Three passes for the hospital, and three nurses’ uniforms in spotless white.
* * *
Shirley gave a grimace of annoyance. “You haven’t got the dosage right. Don’t they teach you agency nurses anything?”
The girl blinked timidly behind her glasses. She was a pint-sized little drip, with short dark hair and toffee-coloured eyes. Her uniform dress stretched tightly round her compact, curvy figure. Shirley was tempted to suggest that she try her hand at modelling instead.
The ward was busy, but that wasn’t why the shift was proving stressful. It was more to do with the police officers on guard. There were two of them, both female, armed with chunky holstered Glocks. One was in “Miss X’s” room, while the other slouched on a chair outside the door.
The nurses hadn’t been told much about their latest patient. The woman was a “witness”, that was all. Shirley had made a point of treating both PCs like airheads, and she clearly had enough disdain to spare. This was her ward, and she ran it like an army dormitory. Her English-rose good looks contrasted with her stiff-backed poise.
“Give me that.” She took the chart. “Rebecca, isn’t it? Just sit at the desk and answer calls. I’ll do the drugs myself.”
The agency nurse looked crestfallen but didn’t try to argue. She went back to the nurses’ desk. Shirley watched her with a haughty little smile. She pressed the clipboard to her shapely bosom, then tossed back her blonde ponytail and went to check the drug pump in room two.
Becky sat down at the desk, and now she gave a thin smile of her own. She guessed that Shirley had a Forces background. No doubt she was the kind of girl who only went to bed with officers. Becky was much less choosy about who she spread her legs for. When you lived life on the edge, you lived it to the full.
She’d never make a nurse, but there were some things she excelled at. Her skills were quite the opposite of those a nurse required. Beneath her dress, a gun was strapped around her stay-up stocking. It was a Sig-Sauer P230: compact, trim and deadly. Just like her.
* * *
The hospital was lit up like a city, but it had its dark and seamy side as well. The loading bay around the back was bleak and full of shadows. Two nurses on their break were smoking underneath a single sodium lamp.
Engrossed as they both were in giggly gossip, they didn’t sense the figures closing in. The scrape of a boot on tarmac made the pair of them look round, to find two grim-faced girls in coats approaching them.
One of the nurses breathed out smoke and eyed them sullenly. Now she was on break, she didn’t need to be so sweet. “This is hospital property,” she told them. “The public aren’t allowed back here. Go round to the main entrance …”
While she was speaking, one of the girls pulled out a silenced pistol. It made a gassy popping sound, and a hole appeared beneath the nurse’s fringe. She stopped talking abruptly with a stunned look on her face, then crumpled with her knees together: prim and proper even as she died.
Her companion’s mouth gaped open and the pistol swung towards her. “Take off your uniform,” the killer said. The nurse stared back with saucer eyes, then dropped her cigarette and started fumbling with the poppers on her dress. She’d been planning to meet her boyfriend at the end of her shift, and was wearing a Victoria’s Secrets bra. The dress slipped down around her thighs, revealing matching panties. Her pampered flesh was pale with shock and trembling in the cold.
The girl let her step out of the dress, then shot her through the heart. The nurse arched backwards with a gasp. Blood spilled into her cleavage as she slumped. The killer picked the dress up, holding it against herself. Her friend crouched to unfasten the first nurse’s uniform.
Melinda and two other girls came forward from the shadows. They wore the uniforms which they had taken from the house. Melinda’s dress was too small: she could feel the poppers straining. “Does my bum look big in this?” she said, and the others gave wry smiles.
The nurse who’d had her brains shot out was rolled onto her belly. The girl pulled back her unstained dress, revealing pink bra straps on her bare shoulders. Melinda checked her watch. They were on schedule. She knew exactly where to go, and what they would find waiting when they got there.
She gave her team a quick once-over. All of them were army veterans. Jo had been dishonourably discharged after being caught in bed with the base commander’s wife. Katie had got her marching orders due to her fondness for Colombian marching powder. Sarah and Jas had quit after a tour in Iraq: not through disillusion but because they couldn’t fight in the front line.
Melinda had been an officer, until she got cashiered for her sadistic bullying of young recruits. She’d pulled the team together and they’d bonded eagerly, welcoming the chance to put their discipline and training to good use. The money was much better, and the lifestyle less austere. And they didn’t much care who they had to kill.
* * *
“’Scuse me, Nurse – is there any chance of another cup of tea?”
Becky looked up from her notes and smiled politely. The police guard from the corridor was standing by the desk. The girl had a cheerful face, but she was clearly getting bored, and the ward’s heat had begun to take its toll. She’d taken off her body armour and her sweater too, and was in her short-sleeved regulation shirt. Becky’s eyes flicked to the pistol on the curve of the girl’s hip. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
A third guard – a male sergeant – was behind her in the office. He had an MP5 with him, which Shirley wouldn’t let onto the ward. The carbine was lying on the desk as he phoned in his report. Becky gestured to his mug, and he nodded gratefully and kept on speaking.
Becky made the tea and brought a mug out to the woman. “This is ever so exciting,” she confessed. “Do you think she’s really under threat?” The PC just shrugged vaguely. Then the buzzer at the ward doors sounded once.
Becky looked at the CCTV screen. A bed was in the corridor outside. A nurse stood at either end of it, with a third alongside pushing a drug pump. Becky peered round questioningly, not sure what she should do. “It’s all right,” said a passing nurse, “we’re expecting someone back from theatre.”
The policewoman took a swig of tea. Becky pushed the button to unlock the doors. The bed was wheeled into the ward. She heard the syringe pump beeping. The female patient lay inert, with an oxygen mask obscuring mouth and nose.
The nurse who’d spoken went to meet them. “Hi,” she said, then frowned. “That’s not Miss Hirst …” A bell went off in Becky’s mind, but before she could react, the sleeping patient sat bolt upright on the bed.
A silenced Uzi opened fire from underneath the bedclothes. It shredded the white sheet and stitched a row of holes across the nurse’s dress. The girl danced backwards jerkily as the wounds bloomed like carnations. The ‘patient’ kicked the sheet back and the gun came into view. The policewoman dropped her mug and made to grab her holstered pistol. The Uzi coughed another burst that thwacked into her breasts. The PC squealed and arched her spine, clutching vainly at her bosom. Her crisp white blouse was blotted red by the time she came to rest beside the nurse.
There were silenced pistols on the bed, and the escorts scooped them up. Becky’s hand slapped at her thigh, but the nearest girl swung round to aim at her. Becky froze and stared into the silencer’s black tunnel. She felt no fear – just sick anticipation.
A nurse came out of the nearest bay. “What’s going on…?” she asked, and then went pale and just said “Oh,” in a small voice. Sarah, the girl who’d pushed the syringe pump, shot her through the breast. The nurse slumped as if swooning, with a bright rosette of blood on her white dress.
Jas kept her gun on Becky as she moved towards the desk. She was a pretty Asian girl, her dress contrasting with her honeyed skin. Becky cringed and tried to look as timid as she could. The killer’s eyes were dark and pitiless. She heard the sergeant clamber up and come out of the office. Jas fired over Becky’s head and he spun around, his MP5 unfired.
The fourth assassin, Katie, barged into the guarded side-room. The policewoman inside was leafing through a magazine. She looked up from the bedside chair and the first shot pierced her forehead, exploding blood across the wall as she bucked convulsively and fell aside.
Becky glanced towards the CCTV monitor. A fifth girl was keeping watch outside the ward. She looked towards the gun again and made her plump lip tremble. Jas smiled down unpleasantly: she saw she’d have no trouble with this one. “If anyone calls, you fob them off.” She came round behind the desk and hit the button for a cardiac arrest.
The alarm began to blare its steady rhythm. The remaining nurses on the ward came running in response. The killers shot them down without compunction, giving each shocked girl her own quick cardiac arrest. Becky watched them grimacing and clawing at their chests. The last of them was dead before the first had hit the floor.
Melinda, who’d been on the bed, gestured smartly with her Uzi. The crash bell was cut off again, and Becky’s heartbeat pounded in the hush. “Right,” Melinda said, “let’s find out what she’s got to say. Two minutes to make her talk, girls – then we kill her and get out.”
“Our client doesn’t like being spied on,” murmured Jas at Becky’s elbow. Her pistol nudged the small girl’s neck. “Do you promise not to tell on us?” she teased.
Becky nodded urgently. The phone began to ring. She licked her lips and picked it up with the silencer pressed hard against her nape.
“Ah … hello, Jenner Ward …”
“Hi … is that Rebecca?” It was a half-familiar voice. She realised it was a doctor whom she’d worked with earlier that afternoon. “It’s Dr Wheeler … Chris. You still remember me, I hope! I was wondering what you’re doing after work?”
“Um,” said Becky, “right now isn’t really a good time.”
“Okay … I’ll call you later then?”
“You do that, Chris,” said Becky and hung up.
“Attagirl,” Jas taunted her, still probing with her pistol. Melinda and Katie had disappeared into the target’s room. Sarah waited calmly at the far end of the ward. Most of the patients were trying to sleep and hadn’t realised what was going on.
The pistol under Becky’s dress seemed to burn against her thigh, but she knew she couldn’t try for it. Not yet. A stethoscope was lying on the worktop next to her, but there was no syringe or scalpel within reach. Jas tired of toying with her, and Becky felt the silencer withdraw. A patient’s bell blared flatly and she licked her lips. “I’d better answer that …”
“You must be joking, bitch,” said Jas, but Becky sensed her look towards the sound. The light was on above the door of one of the bed-bays. Becky let her shoulders slump – and powered backwards in her swivel chair.
She crashed into the girl behind her, taking her off guard. Jas lurched and Becky grabbed her wrist, then spun the chair around. Jas was wrenched round with it and slammed hard into the worktop. Becky swung clear of the chair and grabbed the stethoscope. She looped the rubber tube around the stunned assassin’s neck and jerked it taut. Jas made a croaking sound. She flailed behind her wildly with the pistol as Becky wedged one knee against her spine. Grimacing, the small girl bent her backwards, and Jas’s tongue protruded as she choked.
The muffled grunts and thuds brought Sarah running. Becky glimpsed her gun come up, and swung her victim round to block the shot. The silenced bullet pierced Jas between her heaving breasts, shattering her sternum with a jolt that almost rattled Becky’s teeth. The two of them arched back beneath the impact, but Becky’s hand was on her gun and drawing as she fell. She fired the pistol snap-shot as she dropped behind the worktop. The bullet hammer-drilled into the blonde assassin’s brow.
Sarah tossed her head like a frisky mare. A red sleet hit the fire-door behind her. She slumped against the wall and slithered down it, her white dress riding up to give a view of sheer black panties underneath.
The shot was deafening after the cough of silenced weapons. Becky hit the floor under the Asian girl’s dead weight. She heaved the corpse aside and clambered up into a crouch. As she peered around the desk, Melinda leaned into the corridor.
The Uzi gave a muffled blurt, ripping fragments from the woodwork. Becky felt the bullets fan her hair as she ducked back. The fallen sergeant’s MP5 was lying within reach. She pushed the Sig into her belt and snatched the carbine up. The law-enforcement model didn’t fire on automatic, but it still felt reassuring as she hunched her shoulder tight against the butt.
“Nurse!” demanded someone from the nearest darkened bay.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Becky called.
Melinda kept her Uzi levelled at the nurses’ station. Her instincts said to cut and run, despite the blatant challenge to her pride. Losing comrades on a job was something you accepted. But before the mission ended, she was going to kill that interfering bitch.
Katie was still in the room, her attention wavering between the doorway and the woman in the bed. Their target cowered back against the pillows, holding her sheet up to her chin as though the bedlinen was bullet-proof. Her wide blue eyes were framed by stylish glasses. She stared at Katie fearfully. The assassin sneered and kept her pistol aimed.
Melinda made a snap decision. “Do her, and let’s go.” Katie squeezed off two quick shots at once. The bullets twitched the sheet and tore a pair of smoking holes. The woman flopped back with a winded sob. But something about the thud of impacts didn’t sound quite right. Katie registered as much as she started to turn back towards the door. The holes in the white sheet stayed dark and bloodless. The woman’s staring eyes took on a new intensity.
Before Katie could react, a gunshot dinned against her ears. The white sheet billowed off the patient’s lap. The young assassin felt a sickening punch into her midriff. She stumbled back, still bringing up her gun. The woman sat up in the bed and the sheet slid down her body, revealing a police flak vest underneath. She tugged a Glock 17 out of the crumpled folds of cotton, gripping it with both hands to squeeze off another shot. The bullet ruptured Katie’s breast and kicked her over backwards, but she pulled her trigger as she fell, and her firearms training paid off one last time. The round blew a coin-sized hole in the policewoman’s pale forehead, flipping back her head so that her glasses spun and smashed against the wall.
Katie hit the floor like a rag doll and sprawled unmoving, her white dress stained with blood like spilt red wine. The blank-eyed PC reared against the pillows, then lolled towards her colleague in the chair beside the bed.
Melinda swore, and realised that her team had been set up. She glanced towards the ward door – then swung back towards the nurses’ desk again. Beside herself with rage, she moved towards it, squeezing off short bursts to keep the bitch’s head well down. The bullets gouged the worktop like the claw-strokes of a grizzly. A pile of notes was plucked into the air. A lamp flipped over with a clang, and the crunch of splintered woodwork seemed much louder than the Uzi’s hacking cough.
“Nurse!” the patient called impatiently.
Crouching ever lower as the bullets whirred above her, Becky fired through the front panel of the desk. The shots were blind, but the third one struck Melinda in the thigh. The former officer cried out in shock. Becky bobbed up with the carbine jammed against her shoulder, her trigger-finger pumping rapid fire. The recoil made her breasts bounce in her tight white uniform. Melinda tried returning fire, but didn’t have a chance.
Becky’s bullets lifted the assassin off her feet. Melinda grimaced, arching back as blood erupted scarlet through her dress. The uniform burst open as she wriggled in mid-air, revealing punctured breasts in an expensive bra. Then she smashed into a glass partition and tumbled through into the nearest bay. She landed on the patient who’d been calling, her body sprawling belly-up across the woman’s legs.
Becky’s ears were ringing from the gunfire, but still finely-tuned enough to hear the cartridge cases tinkling to the floor. The imperious female patient started screaming. Becky lowered the MP5 and glanced towards the CCTV screen.
Jo, the fifth assassin was still standing guard outside. It was clear that something had gone wrong. She began withdrawing down the corridor. The stinging fusillade of shots had been replaced by screaming. She had a queasy feeling that the other girls would not be coming back.
Then the bed they’d borrowed was rammed out through the ward doors. Jo recoiled and raised her gun. The bed came clanking down the corridor. She glimpsed a figure pushing it, and pumped her pistol’s trigger, but the bullets ricocheted off the steel frame. Becky was petite enough to crouch behind the headboard. A shot tore through the pillows, and another struck the mattress with a thud. She gave the bed a final shove and let it hurtle forwards. Jo fired once more, uselessly, then lurched out of its path.
Becky was down on one knee with her Sig gripped in both hands. She squeezed off two quick rounds and put them both into the bulge of Jo’s left breast. The killer jack-knifed with a squawk, her long legs scything upwards to display the stockings under her short dress. The double impact burst her heart and killed her in mid tumble. By the time her body hit the floor, her snow-white uniform was blotched with red.
The empty bed caromed to a standstill. Becky kept her pistol braced, then lowered it abruptly and breathed out. Getting to her feet, she padded back into the ward. The screams had been replaced by a shocked stillness. Nurses, cops and killers lay contorted where they’d dropped. Then someone darted forward. Becky swung her pistol round. Her finger twitched but didn’t squeeze. A student nurse was goggling at her.
The girl looked young and scared, but she had risen to the crisis and fetched the resus trolley from the far end of the ward. Becky turned the gun aside. “Don’t worry, babes: I’m backup.” The fresh-faced student shuddered, then went back to fumbling with the defibrillator.
“I rather think this lot are past it,” Becky told her gently. The girl blinked back at her, wide-eyed: still smearing gel between the contact pads. Becky had seen her on the ward, but not during the shoot-out. “Where were you when this happened, then?” she asked.
“We were on break,” the student sniffed. “We’ve only just got back. There’s a shortcut through the ward next door …” She knelt beside the body of a nurse.
Becky frowned. “Who’s we?” she said.
A silenced pistol coughed behind her back.
The bullet punched a tidy hole into the student’s forehead. The impact snuffed the light out of her eyes. She reared back, her bosom straining at her tight white dress, then flopped across the corpse in front of her. Becky swung around and froze, her own gun still half-raised. Shirley had the drop on her, with a pistol she had picked up from the floor.
Becky let her Sig drop to the vinyl. “I knew you were an army nurse,” she said.
The blonde girl smiled tightly. “And you’re not a nurse at all. I’m going to kill you anyway, but perhaps you’d like to tell me who you are?”
“A specialist contractor,” Becky murmured. “The Army hired me to kill a bunch of inconvenient renegades. The cops just knew there was a threat, so your patient was a decoy. But Intelligence knew there’d be a hit, which is why they put me here.”
“But they didn’t know about me, hey? Just a debt between old comrades.” Shirley gestured with her gun. “And you copped it in the crossfire. Too damn bad.”
Becky sighed. “So much for army nurses. That pistol’s single-action, and you haven’t cocked it yet.”
None of the other killers would have fallen for the ruse, but Shirley wasn’t used to handling guns. Her eyes flicked to the pistol for an instant, and Becky struck like an uncoiling snake. She shoved the defib trolley straight at Shirley. The nurse recoiled instinctively and fired. But the shot went wide, and then the trolley struck her. She staggered back against the desk and Becky pounced at once.
The trolley toppled over as they struggled for the gun. The defib landed with a crash. A grimace tightened Shirley’s haughty face. “You little slut,” she gritted through her teeth, and pulled the trigger. The pistol coughed on Becky’s cheek; the bullet flicked her hair and hit the ceiling. Becky let herself fall sideways, dragging Shirley with her. They scrabbled on the floor like cats. The pistol spat again. Shirley’s dress popped open as her bosom heaved for breath, and Becky glimpsed her cleavage in a satin bra. The small assassin acted without thinking. She ducked her head and sank her teeth into the nurse’s breast.
Shirley squealed at her in pain and outrage. She tried to wriggle free and Becky knocked the gun aside. Licking her lips, she reared back, then thumped her in the stomach. Shirley gave a throaty grunt and lay there, twitching like a landed fish.
Becky tore the nurse’s dress wide open and grabbed the twin electrodes from the defib on the floor. She pressed the gel-smeared paddles against Shirley’s yielding bosom, then levered herself clear and fired a heart-convulsing shock.
Shirley screamed and arched her spine as the jolt seared through her tits. Her pelvis thrust up under Becky’s, almost touching her. Becky sensed the current and her fine hairs stood on end. It looked as if the po-faced cow had had the biggest orgasm of her life.
Then Shirley’s body bucked and slumped. Becky sighed, as if she’d come at the same time. She knelt astride the dead nurse for a moment, then clambered to her feet and looked around the ravaged ward. The telephone began to ring, insistent in the stillness. Reflexively she reached to answer it.
“Rebecca? Hi, it’s Chris again ... Are things less busy now?”
Becky smiled despite herself. “I guess so, Chris. Now, what about that drink?”